According to this new plan an All-Russian Association of Militias (VAD)[44] would be formed. The existing Nashi branch DMD would be incorporated into this
association. The Nashi militias would be put under the authority of the local police.
Yakemenko, who, in August 2008, had been appointed head of the Federal Youth Agency
Rosmolodezh, a division of the Ministry of Sport, Tourism and Youth Policy, promised that the
government and local authorities would provide the necessary start-up funds. The State
Duma would be asked to pass a law “[o]n the participation of RF citizens in securing
law and order.”[45] This bill would require militias to have uniforms and carry identification, and
it would grant members the right to check citizen’s documents, search private cars,
and use physical force and handguns for self-defense. According to Sergey Bokhan,
the leader of the Nashi militia project, “We find kids, who are practically living
on the streets, who don’t know how to occupy themselves, and who don’t have money
or interests. We provide them with gyms, teach them combatant and competitive sports.
We work with the at-risk group, who would potentially break a bottle over someone’s
head, or throw rocks through windows.”[46] The prospect of a hundred thousand marginal and potentially aggressive young men
on the streets in order to control citizens and maintain order was considered by many
Russians a frightening idea. An additional anxiety lay in the fact that these new
militiamen could eventually be armed with so-called stun guns. These are electrical
Taser guns capable of paralyzing opponents with a voltage of between 625,000 and 1.2
million volts. In some cases these weapons proved to be lethal.
The debate on the introduction of druzhiny (squads) took a special turn in November 2008, when Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head
of the (Kremlin-related) department of external relations of the Russian Orthodox
Church, proposed the organization of Orthodox militias. “Now alongside many church
communities, parishes, there exist military-patriotic groups who have had good athletic
training. They could undertake an active civic role,” he said.[47] His proposal was received positively by the leaders of Nashi and by Valery Gribakin,
spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, who said that the Ministry was prepared
to support the initiative. He added that in the territory of the Russian Federation
the police already cooperated with 36,000 civil movements that provided 380,000 volunteers.[48] Yevgeny Ikhlov, spokesman for the NGO “For Human Rights,” called the initiative
dangerous. The militias would attract primarily “boys and girls from militarized party
structures,” as well as veterans of regional conflicts, whose nerves “are strongly
overwrought.” Furthermore, such faith-based militias might jeopardize the secular
character of the state and the initiative could lead to Islamic militias in Islamic
regions.[49] The Orthodox militias, however, were set up—alongside those run by the Nashi. Newsweek reporter Peter Pomerantsev described how he met with one of these vigilantes on Moscow’s
streets:
“The enemies of Holy Russia are everywhere,” says Ivan Ostrakovsky, the leader of
a group of Russian Orthodox vigilantes who have taken to patrolling the streets of
nighttime Moscow, dressed in all-black clothing emblazoned with skulls and crosses.
“We must protect holy places from liberals and their satanic ideology,” he tells me.
. . . [T]he vigilante sees himself in a fight against cultural degradation. “When
I came back from serving in the Chechen War, I found my country full of dirt,” he
says. “Prostitution, drugs, Satanists. But now, religion is on the rise.”[50] Pomerantsev commented: “[A]s Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term comes into
focus, the cross-wearing thugs are now right in line with the ideology emanating from
the Kremlin—and from the Russian Orthodox hierarchy. . . . [T]he new incarnation of
Putin’s rule resembles less a thought-out program than a carnival where spooks dress
up in cassocks and thugs adorn themselves with crucifixes, shouting snatches of medieval
theology, Soviet conspiracy theories, and folk-metal choruses.”[51]
A Historical Precedent: Khrushchev’s
Druzhiny
